Supplier Assignment Hierarchy

You define a supplier assignment at the area level, but you can also further define the assignment at the community, phase, lot, or option level. You can also define a supplier within the national purchasing structure.

The R44H700 program first searches for the greatest level of specificity. If it finds no matching record, the system continues to the next level, and so on. This table lists the eight levels of specificity for supplier assignments, from most specific to most general:

Level	Community	Phase	Lot	Option
1	Community	Phase	Lot	Option
2	Community	Phase	Lot	A wildcard value
3	Community	Phase	A wildcard value	Option
4	Community	Phase	A wildcard value	A wildcard value
5	Community	A wildcard value	A wildcard value	Option
6	Community	A wildcard value	A wildcard value	A wildcard value
7	A wildcard value	A wildcard value	A wildcard value	Option
8	A wildcard value	A wildcard value	A wildcard value	A wildcard value

If the R44H700 program does not find a preferred subcontractor, it searches for an assigned supplier in the order illustrated in the previous table. The program selects the most specific assignments for a bid for the appropriate date range. For example, the commitment start date is within the start and expiration dates of the supplier assignment record. When the system finds all valid supplier assignment records (all assignments at the same level are valid), it uses the associated bid or takeoff record.